Book Beat Babes

Friday, November 11, 2016

As humans we tend to fall into the trap of whatever is
easiest for us to do as well as what is most familiar, and that includes
technology. But as with all traps,
especially those that invoke complacency, there is a price to pay. In the case
of search engines it could be skewed results that create certain biases or
direct you towards sponsored stories and advertisements with information skewed
towards enticing you to buy a certain product or to not believe someone or
something is as bad as it really might be.

Writers need to take heed when using search engines,
especially if they only use one and never vary the way they structure the
search terms they use. Remember, many of
the creators of these search engines and social media platforms have a profit
motive.

So, what is a writer to do?

Well, I found an interesting article from earlier this year
that provides a list of alternative search engines to the more famous and
mostly commonly used search engine, the name of which is now a verb in the English
language. Nothing wrong with using that
search engine but as with all things in life, knowledge is power and when you
understand who the wizard behind the curtain really is then you can make more
informed choices.